Pakistani Taliban Chief Baitullah Mehsud on Tuesday claimed an assault on a police academy in Lahore and promised to unleash further attacks.

"We claim responsibility for the attack. This was in retaliation for the ongoing drone attacks in the tribal areas. There will be more such attacks," Mehsud told AFP in a telephone conversation from an unknown location.

Attackers armed with guns, grenades and suicide vests Monday stormed the training centre near Pakistan's cultural capital Lahore, unleashing eight hours of gun battles until they were overpowered by security forces.

Seven police cadets, a civilian and four attackers died.

Mehsud is Pakistan's most-wanted militant and heads the much-feared Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The former government in Islamabad accused him of masterminding the 2007 assassination of ex-premier Benazir Bhutto.

The US State Department has branded him a "key al-Qaeda facilitator" in the semi-autonomous South Waziristan tribal area on the border with Afghanistan.

Mehsud — who has a five-million-dollar US price on his head — said he had set up a council of mujahedeen (holy warriors) bringing together different militant groups "to step up attacks on US and NATO forces in Afghanistan."

He dismissed the US reward for his arrest.

"The maximum they can do is martyr me," he said. "We will exact our revenge on them from inside America."

Mehsud also claimed responsibility for a suicide attack outside a special branch police office in Islamabad, which killed one person on 23 March, and a recent assault on a police post in Bannu in northwest Pakistan.

His group is influential in both North and South Waziristan as well as the Bajaur tribal district to the north, which Pakistani security forces said had been effectively cleared last month following a major offensive.

More than 30 US drone strikes have killed over 330 people since August 2008 in Pakistan, which the United States has put at the heart of its war against al-Qaeda in a bid to turn around the flagging war in Afghanistan.

The US military as a rule does not confirm drone attacks but the armed forces and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy pilot-less aircraft in the region.

The United States last week offered a five million dollar reward for the location or arrest of Mehsud.

The militant leader has conducted cross-border attacks against US forces in Afghanistan and poses a clear threat to American people and interests in the region, the US Rewards for Justice website said.

Pakistan accused Mehsud loyalists of orchestrating a January 2007 attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad which killed two people.